How A Lack of Sleep Affects Your Health

Ally Feiam14/06/2017

Have you recently been having a bit of trouble sleeping? Do you wake up with a headache, back pain or sore joints? Have you tried everything, from calcium tablets to yoga, and found that nothing works? Turns out, it could be your mattress. Surprised? According to a recent survey, 70% of Australians find it difficult to sleep, so if you’re tossing and turning all night, you’re not alone. That doesn’t really help the cause, though. Your mattress may have some effect on your sleeping habits, and you may not even know it. Here are a few ways your mattress can affect your spinal, joint and mental health, and how you can fix it.

If you are dreaming on nanna naps all day, your mattress may have some play in that role. Sleep deprivation is a huge contributor to mental health issues, cognitive issues and creative blocks, and you may just be able to blame it all on your mattress. Studies have shown that prolonged sleep deprivation can have drastic effects on you. On average, you need eight hours of sleep to make yourself function throughout the day. With an eight hour sleep cycle, you run through NREM stage 3, which is also known as deep sleep. In this stage, your body starts to recover from your day. Your muscles begin to rebuild, your bones get stronger and your immune system strengthens. As you get older, you’re more likely to sleep less, which means you don’t reach stage 3 of NREM as much as when you were younger. Studies say, however, that you most likely need just as much sleep when you’re older than when you’re a teenager. Crazy, right?

While most think that a lack of sleep can simply make you yawn a lot, there are some real side effects to your health if you don’t get enough sleep. Alongside a higher risk of diabetes, you run the risk of heart disease, cognitive issues (which mean your brain runs a bit slower, which can cause an accident), weight gain and prevents your immune system from building itself up. This can all be solved with the help of a better mattress. Dr Michelle Groves has some eye-opening news about sleep deprivation. “Chronic sleep deprivation causes a knock on effect to your immune system, where your body's cells are unable to fully repair. This makes you prone to picking up infections, like the flu, but also impacts on your mental and emotional well-being. We all need our REM sleep, this is where our bodies fully relax into a deep slumber. It is during this phase of sleep that our body's repair themselves. So you can see if your body cannot fix itself then systems start to break down.” Find out more about Dr Groves and her knowledge on women’s health and chronic disease on her Facebook. Disturbed sleep often leads to sleep deprivation, which in the long run, can offer up those nasty side effects mentioned before. If you’re at work and you can’t seem to concentrate, it may not be the lack of caffeine, it may, in fact, the lack of sleep.

If you’re trying to lose weight, but can’t seem to budge those kilos, qualified nutritionist, Tori Blake may have the answer you need. “Sleep is not only important for overall health, but for weight loss and management. Lack of sleep causes havoc with our hormones, resulting in increased ghrelin production (our ‘hunger hormone’), and decreased leptin production (our ‘satiety hormone’). This results in a greater appetite and a tendency to overeat on days when we wake up tired.” To find out more about Tori and her qualified advice, follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

So how can you get longer and better sleep if your mattress doesn’t let you? You don’t have to drop your savings on a whole new mattress, you can instead invest in a mattress topper. Mattress toppers are the perfect way to readjust your body’s spinal alignment and bring some much needed comfort to your bed. Mattress toppers can save you the effort of buying a whole new mattress and can add an extra layer of support and cushioning for your body.

You may be getting the right amount of sleep, but you can’t seem to shake the feelings of stress and anxiety that have been plaguing you for the past couple of weeks. On average, a mattress can last you between eight to ten years, so if you’ve been sleeping on the same mattress for over a decade, you may be causing more problems than you think. As a mattress ages, it begins to sink and sag. With this sinking, your body sinks into it, and this can affect your muscles and bones in a drastic way. If you wake up with sore muscles and your lower back or neck feels a bit still, it may be your old mattress. Older mattresses don’t just sink, they can also become its own ecosystem, which is full of dust mites. Not only does it sound gross, but dust mites can really take a toll on your body. 2 million Australians suffer from asthma, and it may have something to do with their old mattress. The correlation between an old mattress and asthma may seem a bit far-fetched, but if you inhale the dust mites and their environment, it’s just a recipe for disaster.

If you still need convincing why you should consider getting a new mattress or upgrading the one you currently have, read this article.